Global hurricane activity below average in 2020
In this newsletter:
1) Scientists discover melting of Greenland ice sheet driven by geothermal activity
Tohoku University (Japan), 17 December 2020
2) Global hurricane activity below average in 2020
Paul Homewood, Not A Lot of People Know That, 31 December 2020
3) New evidence that ancient climate was warmer than today's
Ralph Alexander, Science under attack, 28 December 2020
4) China struggles to keep the lights on amid sky-high demand
Bloomberg, 22 December 2020
5) Chris Horner: Red Dragon, Green Agenda
The Pipeline, 27 December 2020
Ralph Alexander, Science under attack, 28 December 2020
4) China struggles to keep the lights on amid sky-high demand
Bloomberg, 22 December 2020
5) Chris Horner: Red Dragon, Green Agenda
The Pipeline, 27 December 2020
6) Matt Ridley: Britain will thrive if we side with innovators
The Times, 31 December 2020
7) Tim Black: In 2021, let’s challenge green tyranny
Spiked, 31 December 2020
8) Ben Pile: 2020 --The year of climate craziness
The Conservative Woman, 31 December 2020
9) And finally: Scientific journal Nature to review papers for “potential harm”
Reclaim the Net, 30 December 2020
Spiked, 31 December 2020
8) Ben Pile: 2020 --The year of climate craziness
The Conservative Woman, 31 December 2020
9) And finally: Scientific journal Nature to review papers for “potential harm”
Reclaim the Net, 30 December 2020
Full details:
1) Scientists discover melting of Greenland ice sheet driven by geothermal activity
Tohoku University (Japan), 17 December 2020
A team of researchers understands more about the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. They discovered a flow of hot rocks, known as a mantle plume, rising from the core-mantle boundary beneath central Greenland that melts the ice from below.
Tohoku University (Japan), 17 December 2020
A team of researchers understands more about the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. They discovered a flow of hot rocks, known as a mantle plume, rising from the core-mantle boundary beneath central Greenland that melts the ice from below.
The results of their two-part study were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Knowledge about the Greenland plume will bolster our understanding of volcanic activities in these regions and the problematic issue of global sea-level rising caused by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet,” said Dr. Genti Toyokuni, co-author of the studies.
The North Atlantic region is awash with geothermal activity. Iceland and Jan Mayen contain active volcanoes with their own distinct mantle plumes, whilst Svalbard — a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean — is a geothermal area. However, the origin of these activities and their interconnectedness has largely been unexplored.
The research team discovered that the Greenland plume rose from the core-mantle boundary to the mantle transition zone beneath Greenland. The plume also has two branches in the lower mantle that feed into other plumes in the region, supplying heat to active regions in Iceland and Jan Mayen and the geothermal area in Svalbard.
Knowledge about the Greenland plume will bolster our understanding of volcanic activities in these regions and the problematic issue of global sea-level rising caused by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet,” said Dr. Genti Toyokuni, co-author of the studies.
The North Atlantic region is awash with geothermal activity. Iceland and Jan Mayen contain active volcanoes with their own distinct mantle plumes, whilst Svalbard — a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean — is a geothermal area. However, the origin of these activities and their interconnectedness has largely been unexplored.
The research team discovered that the Greenland plume rose from the core-mantle boundary to the mantle transition zone beneath Greenland. The plume also has two branches in the lower mantle that feed into other plumes in the region, supplying heat to active regions in Iceland and Jan Mayen and the geothermal area in Svalbard.
A schematic diagram showing the main tectonic features and mantle plumes beneath Greenland and the surrounding regions. Vp = P wave velocity; MAR = the Mid-Atlantic Ridge; MTZ = the mantle transition zone (410-660 km depths); CMB = the core-mantle boundary at 2889 km depth. Credit: Tohoku University
Their findings were based on measurements of the 3-D seismic velocity structure of the crust and whole mantle beneath these regions. To obtain the measurements, they used seismic topography. Numerous seismic wave arrival times were inverted to obtain 3-D images of the underground structure. The method works similarly to a CT scan of the human body.
Toyokuni was able to utilize seismographs he installed on the Greenland ice sheet as part of the Greenland Ice Sheet Monitoring Network. Set up in 2009, the project sees the collaboration of researchers from 11 countries. The US-Japan joint team is primarily responsible for the construction and maintenance of the three seismic stations on the ice sheet.
A map view of P wave velocity tomography at 5 km depth beneath Greenland and surrounding regions (left). Blue and red colors denote high and low velocity perturbations, respectively, whose scale (in %) is shown beside the map. The white dotted lines are the thermal tracks of Iceland and Jan Mayen plumes that are affected by the Greenland plume. The area surrounded by the black dotted lines is where the flow, caused by melting at the bottom of the ice sheets, exists (Northeast Greenland Ice Stream); its water source is located at the intersection of the two heat tracks. A vertical cross-section of whole-mantle tomography passing through central Greenland and Jan Mayen (right). We can see that the Greenland plume is the heat source for the Jan Mayen volcano. Credit: Tohoku University
Looking ahead, Toyokuni hopes to explore the thermal process in more detail. “This study revealed the larger picture, so examining the plumes at a more localized level will reveal more information.”
Full story & references
2) Global hurricane activity below average in 2020
Paul Homewood, Not A Lot of People Know That, 31 December 2020
As the year draws to a close, we can note that, despite a busy Atlantic hurricane season, global hurricane activity has actually been well below average:
Paul Homewood, Not A Lot of People Know That, 31 December 2020
As the year draws to a close, we can note that, despite a busy Atlantic hurricane season, global hurricane activity has actually been well below average:
http://climatlas.com/tropical/
And in the US, tornado activity has also been below average, according to provisional data:
And in the US, tornado activity has also been below average, according to provisional data:
https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data
What is particularly notable is that again there have been no EF-5 tornadoes this year. EF-5s are the most powerful category, and it is now more than 7 years since the last one hit Moore County, Oklahoma in May 2013.
Since 1970 there has been a total of 36 EF-5s, of which 14 occurred in the 1970s:
What is particularly notable is that again there have been no EF-5 tornadoes this year. EF-5s are the most powerful category, and it is now more than 7 years since the last one hit Moore County, Oklahoma in May 2013.
Since 1970 there has been a total of 36 EF-5s, of which 14 occurred in the 1970s:
https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data
3) New evidence that ancient climate was warmer than today's
Ralph Alexander, Science under attack, 28 December 2020
Two recently published studies confirm that the climate thousands of years ago was as warm or warmer than today’s – a fact disputed by some believers in the narrative of largely human-caused global warming.
That was an era when CO2 levels were much lower than now, long before industrialization and SUVs.
One study demonstrates that the period known as the Roman Warming was the warmest in the last 2,000 years.
The other study provides evidence that it was just as warm up to 6,000 years ago. Both studies reinforce the occurrence of an even warmer period immediately following the end of the last ice age 11,000 years ago, known as the Holocene Thermal Maximum.
The first study, undertaken by a group of Italian and Spanish researchers, reconstructed sea surface temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea over the past 5,300 years. Because temperature measurement using scientific thermometers goes back only to the 18th century, temperatures for earlier periods must be reconstructed from proxy data using indirect sources such as tree rings, ice cores, leaf fossils or boreholes.
This particular study utilized fossilized amoeba skeletons found in seabed sediments. The ratio of magnesium to calcium in the skeletons is a measure of the seawater temperature at the time the sediment was deposited; a timeline can be established by radiocarbon dating. The researchers focused on the central part of the Mediterranean Sea, specifically the Sicily Channel as indicated by the red arrow in the figure below. The samples came from a depth of 475 meters (1,550 feet).
Analysis of the data found that ancient sea surface temperatures in the Sicily Channel ranged from 16.4 degrees Celsius (61.5 degrees Fahrenheit) to 22.7 degrees Celsius (72.9 degrees Fahrenheit) over the period from 3300 BCE to July 2014. This is illustrated in the next figure, in which the dark blue dashed line represents the Sicily Channel raw temperature data and the thick dark blue solid line shows smoothed values. The other lines are Mediterranean temperatures reconstructed by other research groups.
3) New evidence that ancient climate was warmer than today's
Ralph Alexander, Science under attack, 28 December 2020
Two recently published studies confirm that the climate thousands of years ago was as warm or warmer than today’s – a fact disputed by some believers in the narrative of largely human-caused global warming.
That was an era when CO2 levels were much lower than now, long before industrialization and SUVs.
One study demonstrates that the period known as the Roman Warming was the warmest in the last 2,000 years.
The other study provides evidence that it was just as warm up to 6,000 years ago. Both studies reinforce the occurrence of an even warmer period immediately following the end of the last ice age 11,000 years ago, known as the Holocene Thermal Maximum.
The first study, undertaken by a group of Italian and Spanish researchers, reconstructed sea surface temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea over the past 5,300 years. Because temperature measurement using scientific thermometers goes back only to the 18th century, temperatures for earlier periods must be reconstructed from proxy data using indirect sources such as tree rings, ice cores, leaf fossils or boreholes.
This particular study utilized fossilized amoeba skeletons found in seabed sediments. The ratio of magnesium to calcium in the skeletons is a measure of the seawater temperature at the time the sediment was deposited; a timeline can be established by radiocarbon dating. The researchers focused on the central part of the Mediterranean Sea, specifically the Sicily Channel as indicated by the red arrow in the figure below. The samples came from a depth of 475 meters (1,550 feet).
Analysis of the data found that ancient sea surface temperatures in the Sicily Channel ranged from 16.4 degrees Celsius (61.5 degrees Fahrenheit) to 22.7 degrees Celsius (72.9 degrees Fahrenheit) over the period from 3300 BCE to July 2014. This is illustrated in the next figure, in which the dark blue dashed line represents the Sicily Channel raw temperature data and the thick dark blue solid line shows smoothed values. The other lines are Mediterranean temperatures reconstructed by other research groups.
With the exception of the Aegean data, the results all show distinct warming during the Roman period from 0 CE to 500 CE, when temperatures were about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average for Sicily and western Mediterranean regions in later centuries, and much higher than present-day Sicilian temperatures. The high temperatures in the Aegean Sea result from its land-locked nature. During the 500 years of the Roman Warming, the Roman Empire flourished and reached its zenith. Subsequent cooling, seen in the figure above, led to the Empire’s collapse prior to the Medieval Warm Period, say the researchers.
The second study was conducted by archaeologists in Norway, who discovered a treasure trove of arrows, arrowheads, clothing and other artifacts, unearthed by receding ice in a mountainous region of the country. Because the artifacts would have been deposited when no ice covered the ground, and are only being exposed now due to global warming, temperatures must have been at least as high as today during the many periods when the artifacts were cast aside.
Full post
The second study was conducted by archaeologists in Norway, who discovered a treasure trove of arrows, arrowheads, clothing and other artifacts, unearthed by receding ice in a mountainous region of the country. Because the artifacts would have been deposited when no ice covered the ground, and are only being exposed now due to global warming, temperatures must have been at least as high as today during the many periods when the artifacts were cast aside.
Full post
4) China struggles to keep the lights on amid sky-high demand
Bloomberg, 22 December 2020
China’s roaring industrial rebound from the pandemic has an unforeseen consequence — the surge in power demand has left factories, office buildings and street lights in some areas straining under an electricity shortage.
The country’s local governments are cutting power to some industrial and commercial customers in several provinces. State-owned companies are sending an army of workers to inspect power lines, and authorities are urging coal miners to produce more.
But that’s done little to quell the stream of domestic media reports on struggling cities. With the rest of the world growing ever-more dependent on China’s medical equipment and electronics exports as their pandemic-ravaged economies suffer, the focus abroad is also increasingly turning to the Asian manufacturing giant’s power supply.
“As the global economy recovers, it will be imperative for China to stabilize its power supplies,” said Rana Mitter, professor of Chinese politics at the University of Oxford. “There is a move in the West to re-shore supply chains and unreliability of power supply in China could be another motivation to do this.”
The world is relying on China’s factories like never before. As one of the first economies to emerge from a pandemic induced lockdown, and as a leading producer of protective gear and medical equipment, China’s exports have soared to record levels. That’s led to surging demand for power, with November consumption up 9.4% over the previous year, the highest level in more than two years.
On top of that, colder-than-normal weather is now adding to winter demand as people heat their homes, and ice is also wreaking havoc on grid infrastructure. Meanwhile, some parts of the country are curtailing electricity to keep emissions in check. That’s left some regions without enough power during peak hours, with two expected to have lasting shortfalls.
“Weather conditions for the following months will be the key factor to determine the scale of the outage,” said Hanyang Wei, an analyst with BloombergNEF. “Peak load would drop quickly if cold weather lasts for just a few days.”
This is all happening as coal, the fuel of choice for a majority of China’s power generation, remains in short supply. The government had limited imports to support domestic miners, and imposed an unofficial ban on Australian shipments amid a diplomatic spat. But domestic supplies haven’t risen as much as needed following a recent spate of deadly mining accidents.
Full story
5) Chris Horner: Red Dragon, Green Agenda
The Pipeline, 27 December 2020
A strategic opportunity to cripple the West.
The record continues to grow of China’s influence on Western institutions, which the Chinese deploy to advance China’s interests. Recent high-profile examples include ties to academic researchers who then lie about their relationship with Chinese underwriters, and agents for China serving as aides or fundraisers for, and, purportedly romantic interests of, elected officials.
Author Rupert Darwall has specifically explored how China is using the “green” agenda to gain advantage over America, including through its influence with environmental pressure groups. Patricia Adams detailed this further in an early December 2020 report published by the United Kingdom’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
Both conclude that Western green groups serve as “China’s propagandists” while turning blind eyes to China’s own environmental and human rights record which – according to the Greens’ expressed standards – would otherwise be subject to strident condemnation and pressure campaigns.
Instead, China is oddly praised by Western environmentalist groups. One wonders if this is related to the fact the groups require special approval from the state to operate within the communist country.
Darwall argues that, taking all of these machinations into account, the climate change issue has become “a national security threat – but not in the way the national security elite assumes.” That is to say, “For China, climate change offers a strategic opportunity. Decarbonizing the rest of the world makes China’s economy stronger – it weakens its rivals’ economies, reduces the cost of energy for its hydrocarbon-hungry economy, and sinks energy-poor India as a potential Indo-Pacific rival.”
For example, already, litigants in the United States have cited the Paris Climate Agreement as requiring judicial commandeering of energy and environmental policy from the political branches, leaving judges to decide what economic development may occur and how.
This past summer, the U.K. Court of Appeal blocked major transportation infrastructure construction citing among the reasons that such projects are incompatible with the Paris commitments.
As China cheers...
Expect more such mischief, via proxies for China, in the United Nations “Climate Conciliation Commissions” which await the U.S. if it “re-joins” the Paris climate agreement as Joe Biden vows to do.
This is one of many reasons President Trump should recognize Paris as the treaty it obviously is, by transmitting it to the Senate for the required “advice and consent” before the U.S. can be bound in any way.
Even Sen. Lindsey Graham Tweeted in favor of such a move, adding, “As currently drafted, the accord is a big win for China and India.”
Graham had been silent on the issue even as President Obama showed “disturbing contempt for the Senate’s constitutional rights and responsibilities” by declaring an obvious treaty to be something he could commit the U.S. to on his own. Indeed, records obtained under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation show Graham – one of three original sponsors of “cap-and-trade” legislation in the Senate until it became obvious this was not in his political interests – was targeted by then-Secretary of State John Kerry as a possible supporter of the Paris deal, along with climate obsessive Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.
No longer. China’s scheming has become too aggressive to further ignore.
Still other FOIA’d emails revealed dealings among Western greens and the Obama-Biden State Department, an apparent business as usual that is likely to soon resume. For example, one April 15, 2015 email, sent by the then-Global Director of the World Resources Institute (WRI) Climate Program to State Department officials, candidly stated the role the WRI played in assisting China to develop the post-Obama “climate” world in Washington, D.C.
Other emails show the Obama State Department leapt at the invitation to help the WRI help China, arranging team-wide conference calls and other follow-up.
Full post
Bloomberg, 22 December 2020
China’s roaring industrial rebound from the pandemic has an unforeseen consequence — the surge in power demand has left factories, office buildings and street lights in some areas straining under an electricity shortage.
The country’s local governments are cutting power to some industrial and commercial customers in several provinces. State-owned companies are sending an army of workers to inspect power lines, and authorities are urging coal miners to produce more.
But that’s done little to quell the stream of domestic media reports on struggling cities. With the rest of the world growing ever-more dependent on China’s medical equipment and electronics exports as their pandemic-ravaged economies suffer, the focus abroad is also increasingly turning to the Asian manufacturing giant’s power supply.
“As the global economy recovers, it will be imperative for China to stabilize its power supplies,” said Rana Mitter, professor of Chinese politics at the University of Oxford. “There is a move in the West to re-shore supply chains and unreliability of power supply in China could be another motivation to do this.”
The world is relying on China’s factories like never before. As one of the first economies to emerge from a pandemic induced lockdown, and as a leading producer of protective gear and medical equipment, China’s exports have soared to record levels. That’s led to surging demand for power, with November consumption up 9.4% over the previous year, the highest level in more than two years.
On top of that, colder-than-normal weather is now adding to winter demand as people heat their homes, and ice is also wreaking havoc on grid infrastructure. Meanwhile, some parts of the country are curtailing electricity to keep emissions in check. That’s left some regions without enough power during peak hours, with two expected to have lasting shortfalls.
“Weather conditions for the following months will be the key factor to determine the scale of the outage,” said Hanyang Wei, an analyst with BloombergNEF. “Peak load would drop quickly if cold weather lasts for just a few days.”
This is all happening as coal, the fuel of choice for a majority of China’s power generation, remains in short supply. The government had limited imports to support domestic miners, and imposed an unofficial ban on Australian shipments amid a diplomatic spat. But domestic supplies haven’t risen as much as needed following a recent spate of deadly mining accidents.
Full story
5) Chris Horner: Red Dragon, Green Agenda
The Pipeline, 27 December 2020
A strategic opportunity to cripple the West.
The record continues to grow of China’s influence on Western institutions, which the Chinese deploy to advance China’s interests. Recent high-profile examples include ties to academic researchers who then lie about their relationship with Chinese underwriters, and agents for China serving as aides or fundraisers for, and, purportedly romantic interests of, elected officials.
Author Rupert Darwall has specifically explored how China is using the “green” agenda to gain advantage over America, including through its influence with environmental pressure groups. Patricia Adams detailed this further in an early December 2020 report published by the United Kingdom’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
Both conclude that Western green groups serve as “China’s propagandists” while turning blind eyes to China’s own environmental and human rights record which – according to the Greens’ expressed standards – would otherwise be subject to strident condemnation and pressure campaigns.
Instead, China is oddly praised by Western environmentalist groups. One wonders if this is related to the fact the groups require special approval from the state to operate within the communist country.
Darwall argues that, taking all of these machinations into account, the climate change issue has become “a national security threat – but not in the way the national security elite assumes.” That is to say, “For China, climate change offers a strategic opportunity. Decarbonizing the rest of the world makes China’s economy stronger – it weakens its rivals’ economies, reduces the cost of energy for its hydrocarbon-hungry economy, and sinks energy-poor India as a potential Indo-Pacific rival.”
For example, already, litigants in the United States have cited the Paris Climate Agreement as requiring judicial commandeering of energy and environmental policy from the political branches, leaving judges to decide what economic development may occur and how.
This past summer, the U.K. Court of Appeal blocked major transportation infrastructure construction citing among the reasons that such projects are incompatible with the Paris commitments.
As China cheers...
Expect more such mischief, via proxies for China, in the United Nations “Climate Conciliation Commissions” which await the U.S. if it “re-joins” the Paris climate agreement as Joe Biden vows to do.
This is one of many reasons President Trump should recognize Paris as the treaty it obviously is, by transmitting it to the Senate for the required “advice and consent” before the U.S. can be bound in any way.
Even Sen. Lindsey Graham Tweeted in favor of such a move, adding, “As currently drafted, the accord is a big win for China and India.”
Graham had been silent on the issue even as President Obama showed “disturbing contempt for the Senate’s constitutional rights and responsibilities” by declaring an obvious treaty to be something he could commit the U.S. to on his own. Indeed, records obtained under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation show Graham – one of three original sponsors of “cap-and-trade” legislation in the Senate until it became obvious this was not in his political interests – was targeted by then-Secretary of State John Kerry as a possible supporter of the Paris deal, along with climate obsessive Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.
No longer. China’s scheming has become too aggressive to further ignore.
Still other FOIA’d emails revealed dealings among Western greens and the Obama-Biden State Department, an apparent business as usual that is likely to soon resume. For example, one April 15, 2015 email, sent by the then-Global Director of the World Resources Institute (WRI) Climate Program to State Department officials, candidly stated the role the WRI played in assisting China to develop the post-Obama “climate” world in Washington, D.C.
Other emails show the Obama State Department leapt at the invitation to help the WRI help China, arranging team-wide conference calls and other follow-up.
Full post
6) Matt Ridley: Britain will thrive if we side with innovators
The Times, 31 December 2020
The government can kickstart a 2020s boom by giving entrepreneurs fewer rules, simpler taxes and cheaper energy
The Times, 31 December 2020
The government can kickstart a 2020s boom by giving entrepreneurs fewer rules, simpler taxes and cheaper energy
Tomorrow Britain starts to set its own rules, free of the directives of imperial Brussels. Boris Johnson said recently that his government kept deliberately quiet in 2020 about how it would unleash the British tiger lest it scare Michel Barnier during the free-trade negotiations. Perhaps that is true but it is alarming how much more time this government has spent talking about banning things (gas boilers, petrol cars, trophy hunting, live animal exports, junk-food advertising, beer consumed without Scotch eggs) than liberating them. I can think of no example of a ministerial speech this year that urged less regulation of anything.
At the moment we look like a country that is more Euro-dirigiste than the EU itself, ready to enter into trade disputes with the Commission about their disgraceful failure to be sufficiently bossy to the consumer, while demanding the freedom to give in to industries that refuse to grow unless they get generous “state aid”. That would be a shame. If Britain is to have a roaring Twenties, accelerating economic growth through innovation as a science superpower, then we need a government relentlessly committed to removing obstacles faced by entrepreneurs and to resisting the demands for subsidy from corporatists. Enterprise is sometimes the opposite of capitalism.
Virtually all economic growth comes from innovation. New technologies, new habits, new ideas are what drive up living standards. Innovation is the parent of prosperity but it is the child of freedom. History shows that innovation happened where people were free to experiment, fail, try again, change their minds and back themselves. Again and again innovation came from an unexpected source and went in an unexpected direction. A vaccine made from molecular messenger RNA was Katalin Kariko’s futile dream for several decades till this year. Sir Alec Jeffreys’ work on repetitive DNA sequences was an esoteric irrelevance till he invented DNA fingerprinting and transformed forensics. Who are the equivalents today? The mandarin in Whitehall does not know.
Everybody is in favour of innovation in theory but many are against it in practice. King Charles II tried to ban coffee. Hansom cab drivers demanded the abolition of the umbrella. Headlines in 1907 said the new craze for teddy bears “destroys motherly instinct and leads to race suicide”. Bicycles were accused of causing insanity. As Sir William Petty put it in 1662: “Pity the poor inventor. He runs the gauntloop of all petulant wits.” Big business, being bad at innovation, lobbies government to raise barriers to entry against entrepreneurs. Big pressure groups make hay with people’s fears of the new. Big government loves banning things to justify bigger budgets enforcing the bans.
The prime minister should tell his cabinet to discover their radical instincts and take the side of the innovator against big companies, big NGOs and big regulators. This is all the more crucial in the wake of a devastating pandemic that will leave us poorer, more indebted and at far greater risk of unemployment. Business as usual is not an option. Here are four policies that could unleash the British tiger.
An innovation principle is needed in law to require government to consider each new law’s effect on innovation. This would balance the precautionary principle, which has been wrongly twisted within the European Union as meaning that governments should consider the hazards of a new technology but not the benefits — even if those include reducing the hazards of an existing technology.
Faster decisions by government are vital. By far the biggest problem for entrepreneurs is not that regulators say no but that they take ages to say yes. Setting deadlines for responding does not work, because planners and other bureaucrats treat them as targets not long-stops. Instead, cut the budgets of those who make slow decisions and reward those who make fast ones. As Trevor Mundel, the head of infectious diseases at the Gates Foundation, put it to me recently, the big difference in the pandemic has been that medical regulators return your calls about approving new vaccines at once, rather than saying they might fit in a meeting in three months. He adds: “We must not go back to the old way.” The rapid approval of vaccines in the UK, contrasted with the EU’s lethargic approach, shows what can be done.
Simpler taxes would be a huge boon to entrepreneurs. Britain’s tax code is 15 times the length of War and Peace, which leads to entrepreneurs spending time ensconced with their tax advisers instead of innovating. If Rishi Sunak were to strip away all the tax breaks and loopholes that favour the rich and politically well connected, he could cut tax rates without cutting revenue, as Nigel Lawson did.
Energy prices must fall. Energy is not just another sector of the economy, it is the thermodynamic lifeblood of prosperity. We have some of the highest electricity prices for business in the world and the effect is to drive innovators such as Sir James Dyson and Sir Jim Ratcliffe to manufacture abroad. Current government policy is pushing energy prices up in order to virtue-signal at a climate summit in November that we are on course to meet the commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050. No other country will take a blind bit of notice.
Give the entrepreneurs of Britain cheaper energy, simpler taxes, swifter planning decisions, no subsidies and fewer rules and within a decade we’ll be swimming in revenues for a more generous NHS.
Matt Ridley is the author of How Innovation Works (Fourth Estate). He is a member of the GWPF's Academic Advisory Council.
At the moment we look like a country that is more Euro-dirigiste than the EU itself, ready to enter into trade disputes with the Commission about their disgraceful failure to be sufficiently bossy to the consumer, while demanding the freedom to give in to industries that refuse to grow unless they get generous “state aid”. That would be a shame. If Britain is to have a roaring Twenties, accelerating economic growth through innovation as a science superpower, then we need a government relentlessly committed to removing obstacles faced by entrepreneurs and to resisting the demands for subsidy from corporatists. Enterprise is sometimes the opposite of capitalism.
Virtually all economic growth comes from innovation. New technologies, new habits, new ideas are what drive up living standards. Innovation is the parent of prosperity but it is the child of freedom. History shows that innovation happened where people were free to experiment, fail, try again, change their minds and back themselves. Again and again innovation came from an unexpected source and went in an unexpected direction. A vaccine made from molecular messenger RNA was Katalin Kariko’s futile dream for several decades till this year. Sir Alec Jeffreys’ work on repetitive DNA sequences was an esoteric irrelevance till he invented DNA fingerprinting and transformed forensics. Who are the equivalents today? The mandarin in Whitehall does not know.
Everybody is in favour of innovation in theory but many are against it in practice. King Charles II tried to ban coffee. Hansom cab drivers demanded the abolition of the umbrella. Headlines in 1907 said the new craze for teddy bears “destroys motherly instinct and leads to race suicide”. Bicycles were accused of causing insanity. As Sir William Petty put it in 1662: “Pity the poor inventor. He runs the gauntloop of all petulant wits.” Big business, being bad at innovation, lobbies government to raise barriers to entry against entrepreneurs. Big pressure groups make hay with people’s fears of the new. Big government loves banning things to justify bigger budgets enforcing the bans.
The prime minister should tell his cabinet to discover their radical instincts and take the side of the innovator against big companies, big NGOs and big regulators. This is all the more crucial in the wake of a devastating pandemic that will leave us poorer, more indebted and at far greater risk of unemployment. Business as usual is not an option. Here are four policies that could unleash the British tiger.
An innovation principle is needed in law to require government to consider each new law’s effect on innovation. This would balance the precautionary principle, which has been wrongly twisted within the European Union as meaning that governments should consider the hazards of a new technology but not the benefits — even if those include reducing the hazards of an existing technology.
Faster decisions by government are vital. By far the biggest problem for entrepreneurs is not that regulators say no but that they take ages to say yes. Setting deadlines for responding does not work, because planners and other bureaucrats treat them as targets not long-stops. Instead, cut the budgets of those who make slow decisions and reward those who make fast ones. As Trevor Mundel, the head of infectious diseases at the Gates Foundation, put it to me recently, the big difference in the pandemic has been that medical regulators return your calls about approving new vaccines at once, rather than saying they might fit in a meeting in three months. He adds: “We must not go back to the old way.” The rapid approval of vaccines in the UK, contrasted with the EU’s lethargic approach, shows what can be done.
Simpler taxes would be a huge boon to entrepreneurs. Britain’s tax code is 15 times the length of War and Peace, which leads to entrepreneurs spending time ensconced with their tax advisers instead of innovating. If Rishi Sunak were to strip away all the tax breaks and loopholes that favour the rich and politically well connected, he could cut tax rates without cutting revenue, as Nigel Lawson did.
Energy prices must fall. Energy is not just another sector of the economy, it is the thermodynamic lifeblood of prosperity. We have some of the highest electricity prices for business in the world and the effect is to drive innovators such as Sir James Dyson and Sir Jim Ratcliffe to manufacture abroad. Current government policy is pushing energy prices up in order to virtue-signal at a climate summit in November that we are on course to meet the commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050. No other country will take a blind bit of notice.
Give the entrepreneurs of Britain cheaper energy, simpler taxes, swifter planning decisions, no subsidies and fewer rules and within a decade we’ll be swimming in revenues for a more generous NHS.
Matt Ridley is the author of How Innovation Works (Fourth Estate). He is a member of the GWPF's Academic Advisory Council.
7) Tim Black: In 2021, let’s challenge green tyranny
Spiked, 31 December 2020
Environmentalism has become a key weapon in the fight to restore technocratic rule.
At the start of the year, the world’s plutocrats gathered alongside their political allies in Davos for the World Economic Forum, and listened excitedly while special guest Greta Thunberg berated them for not going far enough in the fight to save the planet. It was a telling moment, capturing just how central environmentalism – especially today’s self-flagellating, end-of-days version – now is to the worldview of the West’s political, business and cultural elites.
It has been quite the rise. For much of environmentalism’s history, it was largely on the fringes of elite discourse, not at the centre. It was the counter-enlightenment preserve of landed aristocrats, disillusioned Tories (the origins of the Green Party), and the New Left. Not the mission statement of prime ministers, multinationals and the very institutions of globalist rule, from the EU to the UN.
But that is what it has become in recent decades: the hug-a-husky purpose of governments; the corporate social responsibility of international conglomerates; the cause to unite nations.
Two key factors account for its ascendency: the long-standing demoralisation of capitalism, and the emergence of essentially technocratic governments after the end of the Cold War. In the anti-modern narrative of environmentalism, these managerial elites found their raison d’etre: to manage the risks and the threats produced by industrial modernity. It even provided them with an ultimate aim: to manage us out of environmental disaster.
But environmentalism has always been more than just a story appended to ‘third way’ governing. It is itself essentially technocratic. It invests authority in ‘the science’ and the expert at the expense of the demos.
And it did so successfully until 2016. Until Brexit and Trump. Until, that is, so many across the West, disenfranchised for so long under this technocratic consensus, seized back some degree of control.
And this has had a tremendous effect on environmentalism. Ever since 2016, the tone has become shriller, the threat supposedly more urgent, the narrative more apocalyptic. Climate change is now a climate emergency. Al Gore’s merely inconvenient truth is now XR’s truth that must be told. And the future towards which we are forever tipping is catastrophic.
This is because environmentalism is no longer the handmaiden of technocratic rule; it is now a weapon in the fight to restore technocratic rule. Hence the presentation of climate change is now so aggressive, so hyperbolic, so threatening. Because it is being used to fight populism, frighten citizens back into obeisance and roll back the democratic gains of recent years. And that is what we have witnessed over the past 12 months, from the wilfully apocalyptic framing of Australia’s wildfires in Janaury through to the UN secretary general’s December demand that all nations declare a climate emergency: namely, the further elite turbocharging of environmentalism as a justification for the restoration of the pre-2016 consensus.
Admittedly, some environmentalists have been concerned that climate change would be pushed down the political agenda by Covid this year, just as it was after 2008 by the financial crisis. After all, some of XR’s planned stunts were shelved and the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) was postponed.
They needn’t have worried. The pandemic emergency has been treated as a climate emergency in miniature. A dress rehearsal, even. This is because it has largely been interpreted through the same risk-conscious prism as broader environmental problems have. Thus Covid has been conjured up as a by-product of baleful modernity, a symptom of our unsustainable lifestyles, a message from vengeful Gaia. As early as March, tireless green twerp George Monbiot was celebrating Covid as ‘nature’s wake-up call to complacent civilisation’. Prince Harry agreed, declaring ‘it’s almost as though Mother Nature has sent us to our rooms for bad behaviour, to really take a moment and think about what we’ve done’.
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8) Ben Pile: 2020 --The year of climate craziness
The Conservative Woman, 31 December 2020
Before it even began, 2020 was already marked to be a year of climate hysteria. It was the UK’s turn to host the annual UN climate meeting, which was scheduled to take place in Glasgow earlier this month. Hence, the first eighteen months of Boris Johnson’s premiership saw the erstwhile ‘libertarian’ attempting to establish himself as a global pioneer of green policymaking: banning all that moves ahead of the conference, like some kind of overweight peroxide Ed Miliband eco-virtue-signalling on ‘our’ behalf. The arrival of Covid-19 caused the meeting to be postponed, but this has not dented the government’s green ambitions to make the UK’s economic suicide the first in what they hope will be a global pact. Rather than dwarfing the climate change political agenda, the pandemic has somehow boosted it.
2020 was a mad, mad year of climate craziness.
Johnson had the keys to Number 10 for only a month before he began banning things. First the domestic gas boiler in 2019, followed by diesel and petrol-powered cars this year. Many don’t believe that such policies will happen, stating that their boilers and cars will be taken ‘from my cold dead hands’ – the defiant warning of US Second Amendment activists. But on this side of the Atlantic, it is an impotent cry. A boiler is not a gun. Moreover, a boiler is not even a boiler without fuel. Switching off the natural gas supply makes a boiler a useless lump of metal, the same as most cars will be if the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars escalates to a ban on fuels.
‘Impossible’, comes the reply from the same quarters, rightly claiming that it will cause chaos and a backlash. But what are you going to do about it? There’s no national party prepared to stand against it with any chance of getting anywhere near SW1 between now and the dates by which much of the Net Zero agenda will be realised. And by then, even if the cross-party consensus on climate change policy fractures, the UK will be subordinate to supranational climate treaties and institutions – precisely what Johnson has been intent on creating.
For a while, it did seem as though the climate change agenda might have peaked. The 2016 Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump cast doubt over the march of, and signalled growing scepticism towards, globalism. This led to deep frustration within the climate camp. Since the UK Climate Change Act in 2008, climate policy ‘ambition’ had consisted of little more than setting abstract targets. Progress towards them had been stalled by politicians’ nervousness about the public’s appetite for draconian legislation, the abstract nature of the targets concealing the detail from the public.
Greta, her ‘schools strike’ movement and Extinction Rebellion were the expression of this frustration. They mobilised a level of panic and fearmongering not previously seen in the climate wars, urged on by the media and almost the entire political class. As I pointed out at the time, despite the radical appearance, there was nothing more mainstream than an XR protest. That is how their goals were achieved in such short order. Within months of their first protest, XR had been invited to ministerial meetings and to give evidence to select committees. In 2019, they demanded, and got Net Zero. In 2020, the Climate Assembly they had demanded was delivered.
The Climate Assembly seemingly solved the problem of the public’s lack of interest in the climate agenda. It was, in fact, nothing more than a 108-member focus group, drawn from the public, which met over six weekends to consider a range of policy options. But by staging a performance, in which power was seemingly handed to members of the public, the technocrats and green activists who ran the Assembly have persuaded MPs that the public now share their view. And this is how abstract targets will be turned into an agenda for very real changes in society. 2020 marked the beginning of a new phase of environmental politics.
The UK’s main carbon bureaucracy, the Committee on Climate Change, claimed to have based policy recommendations on the findings of the Assembly. But this claim turns out to be false.
It was the PM himself, standing in front of a ‘Build Back Better’ slogan, who told the Conservative Party conference that Britain could become ‘the Saudi Arabia of wind’ – a claim, which like every point on his ten-point plan, is based on unicorns, which, even if they ever do turn up, still fail basic tests in reality. Even before the pandemic, the agenda had not been tested by democratic process. And surely, even by the time the ten-point plan was announced — during the second lockdown, before the abolition of Christmas – most people could see that emphasis on ‘building back better’ risks building back at all. It lets the unaccountable green blob decide what is or is not ‘better’ than what has been destroyed, whereas most people wanted a return to normality.
After all, a lot has been destroyed by the very people who claim to be the architects of ‘better’. But the consequence of the argument that the ‘recovery’ from 2020 must be ‘green’ is that it will be the people who have destroyed countless jobs and businesses who will ‘rebuild’ millions of jobs in ‘better’ industries served by ‘better’ businesses. How much ‘better’ are such destroyers really capable of delivering? We will begin to find out in 2021.
Criticism of the government’s responses to both Covid and climate change is typically answered with claims about ‘science’. But 2020 revealed the lie. Policies are no more scientific than they are democratic. Scientists who have spoken out this year against lockdowns, questioned the efficacy of facemasks or challenged the wildly inaccurate epidemiological projections, have faced smears from the press, censorship from tech giants, and intransigence from government. As with Covid, so it is with climate change. 2020 ran in time-lapse the last 30 years of the climate debate: if you disagree with political orthodoxy, you’re simply ejected from decision-making and other influential institutions. That’s is how consensus is established in 21st century politics.
9) And finally: Scientific journal Nature to review papers for “potential harm”
Reclaim the Net, 30 December 2020
Outraged Twitter users are deciding the future of science publications.
Nature Communications, a prominent science journal, has now revised its internal guidelines after a recently-published paper caused outrage on Twitter as it concluded that male mentors were a better fit for female students. It is worth noting that two authors among the three that had authored the paper about mentorship had both withdrawn their names from the paper as the “conclusions in their current form do not stand.”
After the Twitter outrage, going forward, Nature Communications will be considering “the dimension of potential harm” before publishing any paper.
The journal’s move to start considering “potential harm” did not sit well with many. A research scientist at the Western Governors University Labs, Nicole Barbaro, tweeted about the new changes in the guidelines and said that she wasn’t sure how the policy could be applied “fairly.”
“Any paper can find someone who disagrees with it,” read a part of Barbaro’s tweet. Replying to it, evolutionary psychologist and author Geoffrey Miller tweeted saying that Nature Communications was no longer a science journal and “started being a propaganda operation.”
Miller, in an email he wrote, said that journal editors as well as reviewers, when dealing with papers connected to social issues, expect some or the other kind of “virtue-signaling” about woke and progressive values. “This is the key way that academia is being politically captured, year by year, hire by hire,” wrote Miller.
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Reclaim the Net, 30 December 2020
Outraged Twitter users are deciding the future of science publications.
Nature Communications, a prominent science journal, has now revised its internal guidelines after a recently-published paper caused outrage on Twitter as it concluded that male mentors were a better fit for female students. It is worth noting that two authors among the three that had authored the paper about mentorship had both withdrawn their names from the paper as the “conclusions in their current form do not stand.”
After the Twitter outrage, going forward, Nature Communications will be considering “the dimension of potential harm” before publishing any paper.
The journal’s move to start considering “potential harm” did not sit well with many. A research scientist at the Western Governors University Labs, Nicole Barbaro, tweeted about the new changes in the guidelines and said that she wasn’t sure how the policy could be applied “fairly.”
“Any paper can find someone who disagrees with it,” read a part of Barbaro’s tweet. Replying to it, evolutionary psychologist and author Geoffrey Miller tweeted saying that Nature Communications was no longer a science journal and “started being a propaganda operation.”
Miller, in an email he wrote, said that journal editors as well as reviewers, when dealing with papers connected to social issues, expect some or the other kind of “virtue-signaling” about woke and progressive values. “This is the key way that academia is being politically captured, year by year, hire by hire,” wrote Miller.
Full post
The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.
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